Making Sugar Cookies

Christmas is coming real soon! I have been itchy to bake something festive to celebrate Christmas. In fact, I have longed to bake really cute Christmas cookies with Christmas tree, snow man, star shapes. Too bad, I do not have any Christmas cookie moulds and thought of not wasting my money on them since I already have some cookies cutter which I have yet to utilize at all.

This afternoon, I let my husband to pick something that he wanted me to bake today. My husband randomly chose Shortbread Cookies recipe from the internet and I followed his choice. Since I had a burning desire to decorate cookies in pretty manner by using royal icing, I skipped the chocolate dip idea as per advised in this Shortbread Cookies original recipe and made some royal icing instead.

Here's the slightly modified egg-less Sugar Cookies recipe that I used today.

My first trial of decorating cookies with royal icing after so long. 

Sugar Cookies

Ingredients:

• 260 gr Flour
• 1 tbsp Milk Powder
• 220 gr Margarine or softened unsalted butter
• 60 gr Icing Sugar
• 1 tsp Vanilla Essence

Royal Icing:

• 1 Egg White
• 150 gr Icing Sugar
• 1 tbsp Lemon Juice
• 1 tsp Vanilla Essence

Tutorial:

1. Mix together the flour and milk powder in a dry container. Set aside.
2. Cream margarine, vanilla essence and icing sugar until white using high-speed electric mixer.
3. Fold in the flour and milk powder into the margarine mixture by using spatula. 
4. Wrap the cookie dough in a plastic wrap and chill it in the fridge for about one hour.
5. Mould the chilled cookies dough into desired shapes and bake the cookies in preheated oven for 10-15 minutes until golden brown. Bear in mind these three tips in baking cookies so you'd have perfect looking cookies.
6. Let the cookies to completely cool before decorating them with royal icing or chocolate dip.
7. To make royal icing: Combine egg white, lemon juice and vanilla essence in a large bowl. Beat them together by using high-speed mixer whilst slowly adding the icing sugar. Keep beating it until the mixture forms soft peaks and ready for piping. Add some food colouring or when necessary. I added some strawberry essence and pink food colouring into my royal icing today.
8. Happy decorating the cookies. Let the royal icing on the cookies dry and set a firm glaze before storing the decorated cookies in an air-tight plastic container.

If you do not plan to make any royal icing or chocolate dip for these sugar cookies or shortbread cookies, I suggest you add a bit more icing sugar into the basic shortbread cookies recipe above to make the cookies tastier.

I remember I once made sugar cookies and sold them 

at my Mom's Saloon during Christmas about ten years ago. Sweet memory!

In conclusion, for a beginner baker like me, decorating cookies is indeed a fun yet stressful episode. It was stressful mainly because I could not produce the nice decorated cookies that I pictured in my mind. Anyway, although decorating cookies one by one took a really long time to finish, overall, I had a good time baking and decorating the cookies today.